The way the bleeding hearts tell it, this harmless grandma got thrown in the slammer by Big Bad Bush merely because she was "distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman." Oh, the outrageous inhumanity! How could America the Cruel do this to an innocent little old lady serving the cause of "social justice"? How can they just let her suffer and perish behind bars? All she did was "distribute press releases."

1960s leftover agitator Dick Gregory is now on a hunger strike until the feds order the "compassionate release" of the left's sweetheart "political prisoner" and she "receives medical treatment in the care of her family and with physicians of her choice." He and Stewart's apologists claim she was prosecuted "to intimidate the entire legal community so that few would dare to defend political clients whom the state demonizes and none would provide a vigorous defense."

Spare me the proglodyte pathos. Allow me to smash the world's smallest violin to bits. Stewart is no martyr, no heroine. She's a menace to peace-loving society who illegally conspired with killers. And there's a very good reason why her client was demonized. He is a demon.

Refresher course for the clueless: Stewart was convicted in 2005 of helping terrorist Rahman -- the bloodstained Blind Sheik -- smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation.

Rahman, Stewart's "political client," had called on Muslims to "destroy" the West, "burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air or land." He issued bloody fatwas against U.S. "infidels" that inspired the 1993 WTC bombing, the 1997 massacre of Western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, and the 9/11 attacks.

Defying a judge's communications ban, Stewart ferreted messages to the Blind Sheik from fellow jihadist Rifa'l Ahman Tara urging him to support a new wave of Islamic violence in Egypt -- and then smuggled out a coded order to his followers lifting a ceasefire between his terrorist group and the Egyptian government. Stewart personally delivered one of the messages to a Reuters reporter.

The Middle East Quarterly also described how Stewart created "covering noises" for the Blind Sheik's translator to evade the communications ban: "On some surveillance videos, Stewart could be seen shaking a water jar or tapping on the table while (the translator) and the sheikh exchanged communications that were then later disseminated to the sheikh's followers..."

After receiving a paltry initial sentence of 28 months for abetting terrorism, the disbarred civil rights attorney was re-sentenced to 10 years in the slammer. A federal panel of judges excoriated her for her sickening arrogance. "From the moment she committed the first act for which she was convicted, through her trial, sentencing and appeals," Judge Robert Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "Stewart has persisted in exhibiting what seems to be a stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes."

Stewart failed to understand "the breadth and depth of the danger in which" her crimes had "placed the lives and safety of unknown innocents, and the extent to which they constituted an abuse of her trust and privilege as a member of the bar," the panel found.

This case remains a shining example of just how dangerous it is for America to give foreign-born jihadists the full panoply of American constitutional rights and all the attendant benefits of a civilian trial. Stewart's treacherous collaboration with the Blind Sheik endangered -- and cost -- innocent lives.

Stewart remains unrepentant. She called 9/11 an "armed struggle." Upon her initial sentencing, she boasted that she could serve the term "standing on her head." After she was convicted of aiding and abetting Rahman, she told an interviewer she "would do it again."

Now she wants mercy, medical comforts and freedom? No, hell, no. This messenger gal for murderous barbarians made her prison bed. Die in it.